i think both sides accomplished what they wanted out of that debate and the stage is set for tuesday which is important to see how the president handles it, whether romney can colt -- consolidate what he started to build. >> what is the prep work going into tuesday's debate. the president needs a strong performance. >> there's universal opinion about that and agreement about that. it's striking that the president, we haven't seen him much in the past five days. i think he's studying very hard. he needs to show he's a different kind of debater with more command and it's not just style here. i think substantively, he needs to go to work on what his agenda would look like in a second term and taking down some of the arguments on the romney side. if there's been a consistent strategy from the obama campaign which is to disqualify romney. >> you're going to have steven colbert on your show today and he should have an interesting take on all of this. >> he does. we talked to him in character and out of character. he's a very astute analyst of the political scene and the campaign and money